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Please do not buy from Amazon
Amazon has obtained a US patent (5,960,411) on an important and
obvious idea for E-commerce: the idea that your command in a web
browser to buy a certain item can carry along information about your
identity. (This works by sending back a "cookie", a kind of ID code
that your browser received previously from the same server.) Amazon
has sued to block the use of this simple idea, showing that they truly
intend to monopolize it. This is an attack against the World Wide Web
and against E-commerce in general.
The idea in question is that a company can give you something which
you can subsequently show them to identify yourself for credit. This
is nothing new: a physical credit card does the same job, after all.
But the US Patent Office issues patents on obvious and well-known
ideas every day. Sometimes the result is a disaster.
Today Amazon is suing one large company. If this were just a dispute
between two companies, it would not be an important public issue. But
the patent gives Amazon the power over anyone who runs a web site in
the US (and any other countries that give them similar patents)--power
to control all use of this technique. Although only one company is
being sued today, the issue affects the whole Internet.
Amazon is not alone at fault in what is happening. The US Patent
Office is to blame for having very low standards, and US courts are to
blame for endorsing them. And US patent law is to blame for
authorizing patents on computational techniques and patterns of
communication--a policy that is harmful in general. (See
lpf.ai.mit.edu for more information about this issue.)
Foolish government policies gave Amazon the opportunity--but an
opportunity is not an excuse. Amazon made the choice to obtain this
patent, and the choice to use it in court for aggression. The
ultimate moral responsibility for Amazon's actions lies with Amazon's
executives.
We can hope that the court will find this patent is legally invalid,
Whether they do so will depend on detailed facts and obscure
technicalities. The patent uses piles of semirelevent detail to make
this "invention" look like something subtle.
But we do not have to wait passively for the court to decide the
freedom of E-commerce. There is something we can do right now: we can
refuse to do business with Amazon. Please do not buy anything from
Amazon until they promise to stop using this patent to threaten or
restrict other web sites.
If you are the author of a book sold by Amazon, you can provide
powerful help to this campaign by putting this text into the "author
comment" about your book, on Amazon's web site. Please send mail to
amazon@gnu.org
when you do this, and please tell us what happens
afterward.
Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
MacArthur Fellow
Copyright 1999 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this
entire article is permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Reply to Jason Fletcher (December 19, 1999)
Jason Fletcher wrote ('A Dissenting Opinion', see below in talkbacks):
I do not agree with RMS on this issue. First, I think he has
misinterpreted the issue. Amazon did not patent cookies. Amazon did not
patent the idea of cookies. They patented the idea of One-Click shopping.
That is essentially correct: Amazon did not patent cookies. The
patent covers the technique needed to support one-click shopping
(which is normally implemented using cookies).
It is precisely for trying to monopolize the feature of one-click
shopping that I condemn Amazon, and ask you not to do buy from them.
From what I can tell, their claim rests on the strength of two procedural
matters, NOT the underlying technology: (1) the reduction of overhead that
might drive a customer away, and (2) the reduction of transmissions of
sensitive information and thus providing smaller opportunity for
information hijacking in transit.
These are the reasons why one-click shopping is a useful feature.
They may be the reasons why Amazon wants a monopoly on the feature;
they are definitely the reasons why I condemn Amazon for trying to
grab that monopoly.
If the feature of one-click shopping were of no particular benefit,
the issue would not be worth paying much attention to.
I chose not to name Barnes and Noble in my announcement because the
identity of the current defendant is a side issue, and people should
not get sidetracked by it. I have no particular sympathy for Barnes
and Noble, and if they were sued for some other reason, I would be
unlikely to take their side. The important thing about this patent is
that it takes a bite out of your freedom and mine--not just that of
Barnes and Noble.
I hope that we are wise enough to value our freedom, and stand up for
it, undistracted by the fact that the first victim is a large company
with no particular claim to our esteem.
Postscript added by Richard Stallman, December 21,
1999
Amazon's response to people who write about the patent contains a
subtle misdirection which is worth analyzing:
The patent system is designed to encourage innovation, and we spent
thousands of hours developing our 1-ClickŪ shopping feature.
If they did spend thousands of hours, they surely did not spend it
thinking of the general technique that the patent covers. So if they
are telling the truth, what did they spend those hours doing?
Perhaps they spent some of the time writing the patent application.
That task was surely harder than thinking of the technique. Or
perhaps they are talking about the time it took designing, writing,
testing, and perfecting the scripts and the web pages to handle
one-click shopping. That was surely a substantial job. Looking
carefully at their words, it seems the "thousands of hours developing"
could include either of these two jobs.
But the issue here is not about the details in their particular
scripts (which they do not release to us) and web pages (which are
copyrighted anyway). The issue here is the general idea, and whether
Amazon should have a monopoly on that idea.
Are you, or I, free to spend the necessary hours writing our own
scripts, our own web pages, to provide one-click shopping? Even if we
are selling something other than books, are we free to do this? That
is the question. Amazon seeks to deny us that freedom, with the eager
help of a misguided (or worse) US government.
When Amazon sends out cleverly misleading statements like the one
quoted above, it demonstrates something important: they do care what
the public thinks of their actions. They must care--they are a
retailer. Public disgust can affect their profits.
People have pointed out that the problem of software patents is much
bigger than Amazon, that other companies might have acted just the
same, and that boycotting Amazon won't directly change patent law. Of
course, these are all true. But that is no argument against this
boycott!
If we mount the boycott strongly and lastingly, Amazon may eventually
make a concession to end it. And even if they do not, the next
company which has an outrageous software patent and considers suing
someone will realize there can be a price to pay. They may have
second thoughts.
The boycott can also indirectly help change patent law--by calling
attention to the issue and spreading demand for change. And it is so
easy to participate that there is no need to be deterred on that
account. If you agree about the issue, why NOT boycott Amazon?
To help spread the word, please put a note about the boycott on your
own personal web page, and make a link to
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazon.html. Updated information will
be placed there.
